spinning boxes
Animal tail, Old Eukaryotes, Locusts swarm, Ginkgo, centrosome, Hearst, LEED
weblensblogs .. 3 column template from Pam Blackstone
My 2004 blog on tblog seems to have nicer fonts.
I wish the break function would work so the next items text didnt crawl up the side of the previous picture.
Some Aus chap has been thrown into prison for killing a cat by grabbing its tail and banging its head against the ground. This is actually the recommended way to kill a small animal, Its absurd to use courts & prisons for this.
When I studied physiology, we were told to kill a rat without alarming it.
Something about liver function & adrenaline.
The recommended method was to gently and calmly grab the tail, then as quickly as possible to swing it around and crack its head on the lab bench.
I also got to kill a white rabbit by injecting a couple mil of air into a vein - a very quick death
2.3E9 ybp Snowball Earth - ice 1/2mile thick?
eukaryotes existed 50 - 100 million years before that ice age
cyanobacteria..were pumping out oxygen for millions of years before that
"ice probably was not consistently as thick as a half-mile"
..droplets of oil encased in rock crystals dating from 2.4 billion years ago..from the Elliot Lake area Ontario .. contained biomarkers..structurally identified as having come from specific types of life. ..A paper reaching the same conclusion was hailed as one of the top science breakthroughs of 1999. ..Adriana Dutkiewicz U Sydney in Australia
Big Galaxies
Galaxies simulated
abc
Locusts Swarm
Dr Jerome Buhl U Sydney ..at a low density of insects, the locusts swarmed around chaotically.
At intermediate density the locusts banded together but changed their marching directions quickly.
..the critical tipping point - 20 insects per square metre - the group immediately massed together and swarmed as one in a persistent direction.
..a set of simple local rules. If somebody drives past them they must move and follow next to them. If they see a dodgem car a little further away then they must move towards them. If they get too close to another dodgem car they must bounce away from it,"
..you suddenly get to a number where they all start moving in the same direction together."
..statistical physics models of disordered and ordered particles.
. Lockheed CEV .. CEV
NASA has chosen the RS-68 engine to power the core stage of the heavy lift vehicle
..the most powerful liquid O2/H2 booster ..650,000 pounds of thrust ..
..33-foot diameter tank..five RS-68 engines.
used in the Delta IV..
..supersedes NASA's initial decision to use a derivative of the space shuttle main engine ..
420,000 pounds thrust
..a dramatic cost savings..
wind turbines south of here in Thomas, W.Va., have been lethal to bats
More than 2,000 were killed in 2003 at the Mountaineer project, whose 44 turbines are owned by FPL Energy
The total share of energy that wind farms generated nationwide in 2004 was tiny — about one-third of 1 percent, according to the Energy Department. But by 2020, according to industry estimates, wind's share of the county's energy portfolio could grow ten- or twentyfold.
animal baby
Ginkgo biloba, to treat asthma, bronchitis, and brain...
mice lacking heme oxygenase recovered poorly from stroke...
..converts heme,..that produces damaging oxygen radicals, to less harmful compounds
..ginkgo biloba might activate heme oxygenase, thereby protecting brain cells.
[ so if you have a stroke, gulp some Ginkgo & light a spliff]
RNAis present in the centrosome Mark Alliegro of Louisiana State U..
..could be a molecular relic from the RNA world,..
..a centrosome itself replicates.
..Palazzo .. centrosomes from.. surf clam eggs.
..finding five sequences that looked nothing like any known RNA ..1 reverse transcriptase..
[Lyn Margulis must be pleased]
the use of the FtsZ ring in dividing mitochondria and chloroplasts further establishes their prokaryotic ancestry.
[Lyn Margulis must be very pleased]
58th birthday this month, I notice that I must eat less to maintain my weight compared with 20 years ago.
Maybe my "gut bugs" have got more efficient at converting food into absorbables?
Gordon's investigations .. He compared normal mice to a strain of gnotobiotic, or germ-free, mice,... mice with bacteria in their guts ate 29% less and had 42% more body fat. The bacteria made the mice fat.
1988, when Tony Blair was shadow energy secretary, he launched a passionate attack on the Conservatives’ climate policies.“What is unbelievably depressing about the government’s response,” he said, “is that they see, in the evidence about greenhouse gases, not an opportunity to promote environmental concern but a chance to make the case for nuclear power. ... Having made a big issue of the greenhouse effect, it became clear that energy efficiency was the best way to deal with it, but … the government’s position has been characterised by a malign reluctance to have anything to do with the notion of energy conservation.” What better description of his own legacy could there be?
[JHoward loves nuclear because it represents centralised power, which must kick-nack to politicos]
LEED system (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), which grades buildings in areas like energy and water consumption, indoor-air quality and use of renewable materials...certified (26 to 32 points) to platinum (52-69);.. Seven World Trade Center received 35 points,..for "core and shell" buildings, with no tenants.
..lobby filled with air that has been ventilated and filtered. "
[- where I come from "Green" or "Environmental" does not mean Industrial/Mechanical filtered air, it simply means air, usually from a few thousand k of open ocean]
..Because the triangles are so efficient .. 21% less steel tonnage than a conventional building
.. 90% recycled content.
(Since virtually all the structural steel produced in the United States comes from mills that use scrap steel as a raw material, project managers would have been hard pressed to find beams and columns made from iron ore.)
..all the glass in the building will have a coating that tends to admit visible light while reflecting a large part of [IR]
The floor of the atrium will be fitted with pipes that contain chilled liquid that will absorb the heat ..
[sadly, almost all "water features" now are ghastly, with chlorine treated water recycling.. Renaissance fountains with water running by gravity (no motors humming) and untreated from the mountains.. impossible now, but why settle for a smelly imitation?
But note the Hearst building does collect rainwater, so the 'feature' may sometimes be once-through]
Most of the 12 desert regions, including the Great Victoria desert of Australia, for which the future climate has been modeled in a computer, face a drier future, the report said.
..rainfall would fall by as much as 20% by the end of the century.
Compounding the threats ..the melting of glaciers that sustain many deserts, such as the Atacama and Monte deserts in South America
The world's deserts are home to some 500 million people today
..The glaciers on the Tibetan plateau, for example, may decline by as much as 80% by the end of the century, according to the IPCC..
..water ..in the arid Southwest of the United States, the deserts of Central Asia and the Atacama and Puna Deserts on both sides of the Andes is drawn from rivers that originate in the glaciated/snow-covered mountains,"
..also in danger. It cited the Rio Grande and Colorado Rivers in North America, the Tigris and Euphrates in southwestern Asia and the Amu Darya and Indus Rivers in Central Asia ..
..Chad, Iraq, Niger and Syria scarcity by 2050
..wealth in Arab lands.. convoys of hunters sweeping through the arid landscapes of Arabia, Kazakhstan and Sudan.."shooting what they can or running it down in Jeeps".
[nb the extent of deserts under Climate Chaos Warming appears to be under debate]
Hungry cassowaries hit town in search for food 29May 2006
..The critically endangered and famously testy flightless bird, known for its ability to disembowel humans with its razor-sharp claws, is running amok through the backyards and suburban streets of north Queensland in search of food.
..left rainforest areas after ..fruit-bearing plants .. were knocked down by Larry's 260km/h winds.
..The birds are..the only animals capable of distributing the seeds of more than 70 species of trees whose fruit is too large for any other forest-dwelling animal ..
There are less than 1200 cassowaries left
Baboons in the room:
johnhawks .. baboons
"I was sitting outside one day, the kids were swimming in the pool, when Eric just flew through the burglar bars and into the house," said Debbie Ellis, who lives in the Imhoff's Gift district. Eric is the alpha male of the local troop.
"It was a bit frightening to see a five-foot-four male baboon standing behind my three-year-old goddaughter."
There has been a leaking fuel rod in one of Koeberg's nuclear reactors "for some time", but Eskom says this is nothing to worry about
tails Eukaryotes swarm Ginkgo centrosome LEED
posted by giordano bruno @ Thursday, June 08, 2006
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